What is the impact of social media on your teen?

These days, being a celebrity can be as simple as doing your job. For Alex, a Texas High School student who works at Target, this couldn’t be any more apparent. You see, Alex works at Target as a cashier and one day a girl who is known as, ‘Rim’ on Twitter, tweeted a photo of Alex bagging her groceries. Now, that tweet has been shared nearly a million times and Alex has more than half a million followers. He has been tweeted by Target and Google, and even has even been contacted to be on the Ellen Show. Throughout the day, #Alexfromtarget has been the top trending post on Twitter. And, all Alex had to do was do his job and be found to look somewhat like Justin Bieber by teenage twitter users.

What’s interesting is that this celebrity-making phenomenon is by no means new to Alex’s story. Social Media has been the creator of many pseudo-celebrities. There have been many scientific studies published in the last few years about the social phenomenon of celebrity-making social media sites. Social media users create their own reality. They become mini celebrities in an entirely me based reality. From research topics that show how ‘selfies’ breed narcissism to entire Facebook photo albums staged to look like the user is on an exotic vacation, social scientists have considered it all. In the last year I have read positive reviews of Facebook being a help in overcoming drug addiction to negative reviews of Facebook fueling cyber bullying.

So, where does your teen fall in the midst of this social media debate? Perhaps your son or daughter has been involved in some painful cyber bullying either as a victim or an aggressor. Or, maybe your teen simply loves posting selfies. Either way, it’s important to open a discussion about what social media means. Often, it is difficult to put boundaries on social media usage, especially when it gets out of hand. But, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Open up discussions with your teen about how social media has affected them and what they use it for.

While we may just shake our head at the silliness of nearly a million people retweeting a picture of a teenager doing his job, we cannot ignore that this is a huge part of our teenagers’ lives. Invite your teenager to discuss the impact of social media with you. It’ll give you a different perspective into their lives and maybe, just maybe, help you understand why #alexfromtarget is such a big deal.